[bromcom] Import CSV to Bromcom

[garbage46]

Has anyone successfully found a way to import a csv of attendance data into Bromcom? We're looking at up to 5 days of registers to import for 5 high schools

 

I have access to the API but there are lots of additional fields I can't find such as calendarID, collectionID, calendarModelID, calendarStartDate and so on.

 

thanks

Edited January 31, 2024 by 6Foot2

[taz]

Hi, did you ever get an answer on this please?

[garbage46]

Yes! It's one of those features that's right in front of you, hidden in plain sight in what I have come to label as the "implemented by a developer who does work in education" features of Bromcom.

In the student modules, you can select one, many or all students then from the actions menu select manual data import

From here you can select a CSV with your data to import.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to remove the tick from the "Exclude following characters from whole document (& ( ) % | / \ ^)" option.

This is ticked by default but includes the two most important attendance marks

 

On the next screen you can choose "Student Attendances" from the data destination.

 

Now you map the columns from your CSV to the fields in Bromcom. See images →

[taz]

This is so helpful, thanks so much

[garbage46]

You're welcome. Another tip, first you should go through the manual export data process for student attendances so you have a template csv and data structure to work with.

[taz]

How did you got the data out of SIMS initially please - did you create a bespoke report?

[bobsmith]

if this is part of the migration surely bromcom are doing this for you?

 

Remember them doing it for us (possibly the last week was chargeable)....

[russlp]

I'm trying to get this data out of SIMS after our migration - have 7 days worth - 7 Marks per child per day. I've got as far as getting the 5 lesson marks etc but not sure how to include the 2 AM/PM marks as well? any ideas? I've put attendance > mark AM/PM but that just puts "AM/PM" on the results.

[taz]

My advice, and that of our support company, in the end was to mark everyone as present for all lessons in Bromcom. Then run a report in SIMS and edit just the outliers. However, we have high attendance rates so that made the decision easier.

 

I tried the export/import route and it took so long to get it right. BC have a downloadable csv into which to put the data to import. Getting the format right is really hard as you will be transferring out of SIMS and into that csv, e.g. the date field in the csv is free text, so if you spell the month November rather than Nov for example, it will fail. If you have any closures in the range you are importing, it will fail, e.g. we had an INSET during our import range and after 24 hours of banging my head over it, discovered I had to redo the data, one set for before INSET, one set for after. I didn't even get to the point of trying to get it out of SIMS - the experience of creating test data in the csv format was enough to convince me.

 

Once we agreed on the second path, our attendance team took one day out (they already knew how to see all absences, sickness, lates etc. on SIMS) and managed to catch us all up in one day (2 week gap, 1300 students). There were some oddities, e.g. sometimes the bulk attendance update tool would say it was updating but did not, but in those rare cases, the team edited the record manually via the manage attendance tool. Feel free to PM if you have any other questions.

 

We are liking Bromcom, and so much of it is easy to use, but the attendance tool was just too freeform for such a drastic action as mass overwriting attendance. Our fear was that we would get it wrong in the csv and either not know (some errors lost in the data) or in our relative newness to the product, do too much and overwrite years of data.

Edited February 4, 2025 by taz